Words to live by:

"...The value of a test comes from its so-called specificity and sensitivity: Infected patients should be correctly identified as infected, patients who don’t carry the virus should be diagnosed as such, and people that unknowingly had the infection should be tested for immunity. This helps us understand who is infected, where the infection occurred, and how the virus was transmitted.

"Testing is also needed to address the uncertainty in making decisions about patient treatment, resource allocation, policy, and so much more. Answers to questions such as “When should we relax social distancing measures — and for whom?” or “How many ventilators are needed in hospitals?” are vital to our economic recovery and public health outcomes and cannot be answered without reliable test data. To find answers requires organizations in which testing is embraced (in action and orientation) by every employee, from top to bottom. “Test early and often” needs to be an organization’s ethos.

"If testing is so valuable, why wasn’t the United States prepared to deploy tests quickly, even before Covid-19 hit the country? In recent weeks, the American media has focused on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) flawed test kits, the reluctance of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve new tests, manufacturing problems, government red tape, and President Trump’s conflicting or even false statements about the availability of and need for tests.

"I have studied and written about testing for more than two decades and can tell you that the central reason is often culture. For virtually all organizations — not just those in health care — having a testing strategy and building a culture to execute it are crucial when dealing with a crisis. Time and again, I have seen how as organizations try to scale testing capacity, they often find that the obstacles are not technology, but shared behaviors, beliefs, and values. Testing early and often is often viewed as wasteful in the eyes of organizations that emphasize efficiency and predictability. That’s until, of course, the opportunity cost of not testing becomes blatantly obvious and precious time and lives have been lost.

"[...]"

[hbr.org]
Organizational culture
Why Is the U.S. Behind on Coronavirus Testing?
by Stefan Thomke
March 30, 2020